Score: (45 pp.) + Parts (88 pp.)

Format: PDF

Duration: 13 min.

Catalogue No.: 011

Program Note

Ladle Rat Rotten Hut: a furry tell Indo-Anguish languish

To quote Howard Chace’s explanation of his own creation: “Heresy ladle furry starry toiling udder warts--warts welcher altar girdle deferent firmer once inner regional virgin. This sentence means: "Here is a little fairy story told in other words--words which are altogether different from the ones in the original version." ---Howard L. Chace.

I composed the music to this story as a present for my daughter, Charlotte, on the occasion of her seventeenth birthday in April of 2007. Charlotte plays the clarinet, and she has played through this piece with a cellist/chemist friend of ours, Jerome Claverie. I would like to acknowledge the use of several familiar tunes in this composition, all tunes associated with either wolves, going through the woods, or simply being out of doors. My deep appreciation goes to Howard L. Chace for having invented, in 1956, the Anguish languish. I would also like to mention that without the help of my late mother, Marian W. Kies, (who had sent me a letter in 1987 with a magazine cutout of this story which remained lost in a stack of papers for 20 years) I might never have heard of the story of Ladle Rat Rotten Hut. There are two versions of the text. The alternate version, in English, is provided in the program along side the Anguish version. It is my intention that the English version, with its optional “happy ending”, be used whenever the music is performed for audiences too young to appreciate the subtleties of the Anguish languish. Subsequent to my composing the version for clarinet, cello, piano and narrator, I arranged the music for several other groups with narrator including oboe, bassoon and piano; flute, bassoon and piano; brass quintet; six horns; viola, cello and piano; full orchestra; and also band.

--C Kies